BY JIM GORDON
No-cost 4-million-ton carbon reduction is in New Jersey’s grasp
Recently, I encouraged Atlantic City Electric/Exelon and the state of New Jersey to embrace Starwood Energy’s plan for the early retirement of the last two coal plants in New Jersey — at no additional cost to ratepayers, resulting in a 4-million-ton reduction in CO2 emissions.
Consistent with Gov. Phil Murphy’s call for a stronger and fairer New Jersey, Starwood, the owner of the last two coal plants, has proposed a plan to permanently retire both plants. These plants, in Logan and Carney’s Point, currently sell their electric output to Atlantic City Electric Co. (ACE, an Exelon company) under contracts extending through 2024. The plants would be closed by the end of 2021, and the remaining supply obligations would be met with power from the PJM market at the existing contract price, with no incremental cost to ratepayers.
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Intervening developments make Starwood’s retirement proposal even more compelling today.
First, the August 2021 report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has heightened the urgency of reducing carbon emissions. “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, and biosphere have occurred. Evidence of observed changes in extremes such as heatwaves, heavy precipitation, droughts, and tropical cyclones, and, in particular, their attribution to human influence, has strengthened,” the report states.
Second, the contractual purchaser of the plants’ output (ACE/Exelon) has enhanced its public commitment to reducing carbon emissions: “It is Exelon’s position that there is compelling scientific evidence that increasing greenhouse-gas (GHG) concentrations in the atmosphere are causing climatic changes and that the energy industry has a significant role to play in addressing this issue.” The company has committed to “drive overall emissions reductions at the grid level.”
